'Mad Men's' Christina Hendricks talks about Joan's moral moment

In an
interview with GQ,
Christina Hendricks talks about
"Mad Men" and her character, Joan Harris, who just went through a particularly gut-wrenching story arc on the show -- basically, she agreed to sleep with a client so Sterling Cooper Draper Price could have a better chance of landing the Jaguar account.

So how does the actress behind the character feel about where the show has taken her? Luckily, she's talking.

"Matt [Weiner] had told me about that storyline, I think it was either last season or the season before," says Hendricks. "He'd had it in his mind, and was planning on using it before, but the development of the characters just didn't get to that point. So I'd had some knowledge of it for quite some time."

When does she think Joan decided to go ahead with the plan?

"I think that when Lane comes in and talks about that money being fleeting, but that a partnership could continue to keep her afloat with her son," she says. "I think that was convincing. You know, she hasn't been taking money from Roger--there was a scene a couple episodes ago when she was like, 'I don't want it, stop' -- so she's doing it all on her own. [The partnership] really could change her family's life."

Would it have made a difference if she'd known Don didn't want her to go through with it?

"I don't know," she says. "I don't know that it would have. But I think that it meant a lot that one person out of all those people--not even Roger!--actually cared."

And, thanks GQ, for bringing up Joan's no-good soon-to-be-ex-husband Greg who she had stayed with despite being raped by him in Season 1.

"I found it very satisfying that she finally got to say, 'You're not a good man. And you know exactly what I'm talking about,'" she says. "And every viewer knows exactly what you're talking about too, so it's just this very satisfying moment, I think."

What about that flirtation between Don and Joan -- was it really a flirtation?

"That moment feels flirtatious and there's definitely a flirtation in there--but I think it's also just two people enjoying one another ... We haven't seen them together that often, and there's an incredible mutual respect that I don't see with too many of the other characters one-on-one with each other."